DesignDaily

Rui Liu | L-U-D Studio’s design for UN Environmental Conference Center for Latin America, in architect’s own words, highlights the negative outcome of the rapid urbanization throughout fast growing countries, such as Brazil, India or China – the indifference to integrated-design of how we utilize water. In the research, Liu went step back, in order to re-investigate the need of the built environment to engage with the requirements of water management, at a local scale. The design is a part of the final theses atBartlett School of Architecture.

The investigation is set in Rio de Janeiro – one of the most dramatic cities in the world, culturally diverse, with great economical potentials, and social identifications. Versatile Conference center, whose form and spatiality is governed by water construction and dissipation can be easily modified to serve numerous requirements, from meeting spaces, cultural performance platforms to private conferences. Using the recycled water, metaphorically and functionally, materializes the challenges of the developing country’s political transparencies.

The aim was to offer mechanically coordinated design of integration of daily grey water management and urban flooding within the local land system, while actually providing a systematic organization of the pathways as animated architectural tools.

Complex form of the building and the basic functional organization is regulated by the water management systems, derived from a series of water flow simulations. The proposal is the outcome of the research directed to alternative flow control and filtration of water. The inevitable, continuous change of the landscape due to its natural bio-degradable lifespan was used as a starting point and the driving force for the design.